Fish Tale

UMass beneath a cold winter sun.

Once upon a time, on a hot summer day in the back section of the Miss Florence Diner, Monique Rinaldi Hulbert told me a story about a fish.

Monique had a job some place where one day she had to deliver something to a co-worker and thereby paid her first visit to that co-worker's house. When she arrived, her co-worker invited her to come in for a sip and a puff. While they were chatting, Monique noticed a small, round, glass object sitting on the table. Inside of it was some water and a living, floating fish. The container in which it lived was so small that the fish couldn't even turn around, and it's tail was continually swishing against the glass. Monique was appalled to see a living creature forced to live in such cramped quarters.

"That fish is not going to live for very long," Monique said, "if you keep it in a little container like that!"

"What are you talking about?" her coworker exclaimed. "I've had that fish for seven years!"

I remember that we talked about how cool it would be if somehow we could swipe that fish and then liberate it at Quabbin or some other place where it could joyously swim with no restrictions in any direction for the rest of its life. We imagined how thrilled the fish would be if given the chance to do so.

Then one day in a soup kitchen in Amherst, a gentleman who claimed to have been a biology major before he decided to pursue his doctorate in cheap wine, told me a different kind of fish tale. He talked about these fish you can find in the Orient, who live among the thick vegetation to be found in some rivers. The vegetation is so thick that the fish never move their whole lives, but just float in place, opening their mouths to consume any food that happens to flow past. I asked this gentleman what would happen if you took the fish out of their naturally confining environment into one where they had complete freedom of movement. He replied that the fish wouldn't know what to do, and would probably just sink to the bottom, where it would eventually either starve to death or be eaten by predators.

I don't know.

I don't have any answers.

Good fish story, Monique.